The Blue Rose
by orianna-2000
Summary: After risking everything to find Rose, the Doctor must face the terrifying possibility that everything he believes is an illusion.
1. Chapter 1

_This is a non-profit work of fan-fiction based upon the television series _Doctor Who_. All related characters, places, and events, belong to the BBC, and Russell T. Davies, used without permission. This story, with all original content, belongs to the author, © 2009._

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_**The Blue Rose**_

by Orianna2000

_"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."_ — Albert Einstein

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

**Part One**

The Doctor opened his eyes without warning. The nurse adjusting his intravenous solution jerked in surprise. He watched as she quickly finished twisting the new bag of liquid nutrition in place and then turned to him with a kind and concerned expression.

First, he asked, "Where am I?"

"You're still in hospital," the nurse answered softly. "Central Infirmary, twenty-ninth floor."

Second, he asked, "Where's Rose?"

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"I don't . . . I don't remember. What happened? We were in . . . New York? _New_ New York! There were Daleks. And—and this dancer . . . no, wait. Cybermen? That can't be right." He reached up to his forehead and touched his temple gingerly. "My memory is mixed up. Scrambled, like someone took a sonic screwdriver to it. Speaking of, where are my things?"

"Everything you had on you would've been put into our secure storage facility," the nurse replied. She flipped back through the patient's chart. "Yes, here it is. Entered into storage: one coat, tan cashmere; one suit, brown with blue pinstripes; one Oxford shirt, dark blue; one long-sleeved Henley shirt, charcoal grey; two cotton t-shirts, navy and brown," and here she paused, giving him an odd glance. "The middle of summer and you wearing all that! No wonder you were admitted to hospital."

He rolled his eyes and gestured for her to get on with it. With a shrug, she found her place on the list again. "One silk tie, blue with red swirls; one pair of brown wool socks, decorated with blue squares; one pair of vintage-style plimsolls, white. Contents of coat pockets as follows: assorted antique coins; three rubber bands; a photograph of an unidentified young woman; a small bag of candy; a gold embossed pocket-watch, and one ivory chopstick. Contents of suit pockets: a woman's short-sleeved top, lavender," and she paused again, raising a curious eyebrow. When the Doctor merely cleared his throat, she continued. "A counterfeit first-edition novel by Charles Dickens—"

"Oi! That book's genuine. Autographed by Charlie himself in 1869."

"A stethoscope; a biscuit tin, half full; a plain gold wedding band; a snow globe from Barcelona; an electronic tool of indeterminate origin, possibly a pocket torch—"

"Yes, that's the one! That's my sonic screwdriver," the Doctor declared.

"—And a small metal key inscribed with the letters Y-A-L-E, also of indeterminate origin."

"Quite. Sounds like it's all there, then."

The nurse turned the pages of the chart to reveal a blank page. She scribbled in the time and date, then reached over and pulled open the curtains to reveal an overcast sky. "Now then, Mister Smith—aside from the scrambled memory—how are you feeling?"

The Doctor made a face and began stretching his arms and legs. "A bit weak, to be honest. How long've I been cooped up in here? Hold on . . . something's not right. Something's . . . missing? What was I doing before I ended up here? No, don't tell me! There was a . . . a supernova, yes? Yes! And—a black hole! And. . . ."

He covered his face with his hands as the memories swirled around his brain. "I was travelling, wasn't I? Going somewhere important. But I wasn't alone—there was someone with me. There's always someone with me."

"Can you remember who?" the nurse asked curiously.

"No, I—hold on. I'm seeing faces, but so many of them!" He couldn't possibly have been travelling with so many different people. All of their faces flashed through his mind and he rubbed at his eyes to slow down the images. A pretty little brunette who'd aged well, a Scotsman with a flaming red kilt, a young black man with a thick London accent and the wrong name, a thirty-something redhead with curves and a fierce temper, an almost-doctor with gentle hands, a man with flirtatious blue eyes and an American accent, a London girl with blonde hair—and he stopped. That particular memory focused in his mind: a young woman who wore bright colours. Blonde hair with darker roots. Brown eyes surrounded by thick black lashes. A smile that lit up the room. A hand that curled into his own as though it belonged there.

He stared down at his empty hand. "Where's Rose?"

The nurse hesitated, her smile soft and sympathetic. "I don't know anyone by that name."

In an instant his expression changed. His eyes burned and his voice hardened to a sharp edge. "I'm only going to ask this once more, and then there will be consequences you cannot even begin to imagine. Now, tell me: where is Rose Tyler?"

Her lips parted but she shook her head without saying a word. Without warning, the Doctor reached out and grabbed her by the wrist. She let out a startled yelp and dropped the chart, which landed with a loud clatter on the tile floor.

"Where is she?" Still holding the nurse's arm, he stood. Storm clouds gathered outside, darkening the room. "Where's Rose? Just tell me, and everything will be fine."

A doctor appeared in the doorway and stood there with authority. "That will be all, Nurse. I'd like a word with Mr Smith, here. If that's all right?"

He nodded sharply. As the nurse hurried out of the room, he pushed away from the bed. His hair stood on end, facing all directions at once in a chaotic fury. Pronouncing each word distinctly, he said, "Where—is—Rose—Tyler?"

The doctor let out a controlled sigh. "I was hoping it wouldn't come to this. I thought with the treatment—but apparently it didn't work as well as we'd expected."

The Doctor clenched his fists and took a step forward, just a bolt of lightning struck in the yard outside. The flash of light cast flickering shadows across the room; he didn't even flinch at the sharp crack of thunder. "Where's Rose? If you've harmed her, I swear by Rassilon that your entire planet will _burn_ just like mine."

"There's no need for threats, Mr Smith," the doctor said evenly.

"No? Then tell me—where is she?"

"Rose Tyler is inside your head."

Not exactly what he'd expected; his expression showed his displeasure. "What—d'you mean some kind of telepathic connection? Or outright transference? If you've used a psychograph. . . ."

"Not at all," the doctor answered. "I mean, quite simply, that Rose Tyler does not exist. Not on Earth, not on the colonies, not anywhere within the Empire. She is nothing but a figment of your imagination. A delusion, if you will."

"I will _not_," the Doctor retorted. "What is this, the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire?"

"What do you mean, second? This is _the_ Great and Bountiful Human Empire."

"Close enough! Naturally you're not going to find any evidence of Rose in your systems. She wasn't born in this century!"

Stupid humans! He'd told them this before. . . . How many times had he told them about Rose? How many times had he woken, confused and disoriented, forgetting? He shook his head and tried to focus. Rose. "She's a time traveller—I picked her up in the early twenty-first century."

The doctor shook his head. "I'm afraid that isn't so, Mr Smith. You see, we have records going back that far. We checked the database and found no trace of Rose Marion Tyler, born 1986, from the Powell Estates, London, England, Earth. She never existed."

"That—that's impossible," he replied flatly.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

He shouted; he screamed; he fought; he cursed, until they sedated him with something that did not agree with his physiology. It knocked him out for three days, and when he woke, he tried to reason with the doctors.

"Look, I'm not from this world, or this Empire. Surely you can tell that?"

"You're saying that you feel alienated from other people, then?" The psychiatrist, Dr Cole, tilted her head and looked interested. "How long have you felt this way, Mr Smith?"

He gritted his teeth and tried not to look as hostile as he felt. "My name is _not_ John Smith. It's the Doctor. Just the Doctor. And I don't _feel_ alienated, I _am_ alien!"

"All right then, if you're from another planet—would you mind showing me which one?" She produced a star chart and slid it across the table.

"You won't find my world on any map," the Doctor said with a grimace. Of course they'd ask to see where he'd come from. Had already asked, how many times now? Thick, this lot. Refused to believe anything they couldn't prove absolutely. He gestured at a blank section of the star chart. "It's gone. Destroyed, long ago."

"I see. So you've lost your family? Some kind of colonial disaster, was it?"  
"A war," he said, unwillingly. "My people fought to save the universe and they lost, so now I'm left to protect the whole of time and space on my own. But that has nothing to do with any of this."

"Oh, I believe it does," said Dr Cole. Her pen scratched against the paper as she made a note in the margins of the chart. "You lost your family and you feel guilty that you've gone on without them. You feel separated from the rest of humanity, yet you have the strong desire to help people. These are classic symptoms, Mr Smith. We could help you, if you'll let us."

The Doctor leaned forward, no longer caring if his face showed irritation. "Look! I am _not_ speaking metaphorically! Listen to my chest—I have _two hearts_! Check my blood. Do a bio-scan. You'll find more than enough proof that I am not human."

"You do have an unusual vascular system," she admitted. "Our cardiologist says it's a rare genetic modification, most likely a colonial adaptation. It isn't all that unusual on terraformed fringe worlds, though it is, of course, highly illegal. Does it bother you, now that you're on a planet with standard gravity and atmosphere? We can give you medication to ease any discomfort, but only if you cooperate."

The Doctor ran his hands through his hair. The strands felt greasy and stiff without the benefit of having been recently washed and styled. He wiggled his fingers in disgust. "Cooperate! You don't want me to _cooperate_—you want me to roll over and pretend that I'm one of you. Another stupid ape!"

He blinked at those familiar words, and then tilted his head back with annoyance. "Oh, here we go—I sound like my _old_ self, again. You've done something to me, haven't you? Something to my brain?"

"It would benefit your mental state if you let go of the delusions that keep you separated from the rest of humanity." Ignoring the loud snort, Dr Cole continued, "I believe that something terrible happened to you, Mr Smith. Something so catastrophic that your mind created another persona—a Time Lord—in order to protect itself from a truth it couldn't handle."

"And what sort of _truth_ would that be?" the Doctor asked sardonically. Spare him from primitive psychology! Next they'd be applying electric shock therapy . . . although, hold on. Is that what they'd done? It might explain the gaps in his memory, the way events and people continued to churn in a random pattern around his brain. It would also explain the vestiges of his ninth self that seemed to be creeping out now and then. Idiots! Messing with things they had no concept of!

Sensing his attitude, Dr Cole tried a different tactic. "Who is Rose?"

The Doctor clenched his jaw.

"She seems to be someone you cared about deeply. How did you lose her?"

"Rose Tyler is alive and well," he said harshly. "She's with her family."

"Is that so?"

"Yes! That's so," he responded, with a glare that would intimidate most lower species.

"Then why is it that we can find no record of her birth? Rose Tyler doesn't exist, except for you. Your mind created the persona of Rose in order to help you. Someone to dream about, someone to hold your hand, someone to help you heal. Only you grew too attached to her, didn't you? And when it was time for you to let go, you couldn't. You couldn't let go, could you?"

And in his mind, the Doctor saw Rose being pulled away from him, a swirling vortex clawing at her, claiming her with the indisputable power of the Void. Her eyes met his, silently begging for him to help her—but he couldn't. He could do nothing but watch as the Void tore Rose away from him.

"I couldn't hold on," he corrected the psychiatrist quietly. "I couldn't hold onto her. But I'll get her back. I'll find her again. She's alive out there—I know she's alive—and I will find her! You can't hold me in here forever. I _will_ get out of here, and I _will_ find Rose. And if you try to stop me, you _will_ regret it—that I promise."

"I don't think so, Mr Smith."

They locked him in a small room with padded walls.

And the Doctor screamed.

_To Be Continued. . . ._

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Special thanks to DameRuth for beta reading.


	2. Chapter 2

**Part Two**

"Please," he begged, his words slurred from the levels of sedative in his blood. "Lemme out . . . lemme out of here."

The psychiatrist shook her head and tried not to make a face at the stink of antiseptic and urine that filled the air in this ward. "You tried to attack an orderly last week, Mr Smith. I'd hardly call that progress."

"Well, what d'you expect? You're holding me prisoner, 'gainst my will." In demonstration, he jerked against the restraining field that held him to the bed and didn't even wince at the scrape of electrically charged particles against burnt flesh.

"You're not a _prisoner_, Mr Smith. You're a patient."

"Looks th' same from where I'm lying . . . tied up. Did I mention that I'm _tied up_?"

She watched him for a drawn out moment, then prepared another dosage of sedative. "We're planning another set of treatments for you, but there's only so much physical science can do. The longer you hold onto this fantasy, the more difficult it will be for you to let go and get better."

"I b'lieve in something that you don't," he replied, "and that scares you to death . . . doesn't it?"

With a quick jab, she administered the drug. "Good day, Mr Smith."

"M'name's not . . . not Smith . . . 's the . . . the Doct. . . ."

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Daleks. Hundreds of them, thousands. All shouting with their metallic voices, "Exterminate!"

He couldn't escape them. He couldn't run, not without Rose. Where was she? Where was Rose? His hand felt so empty.

"Doctor?"

He turned, but instead of a Dalek behind him, there stood Rose. Relief flooded him, almost painful in the release of pent-up anxiety. He reached out to her, but stopped in horror when she looked at him with dead eyes. Tentacles twined around her head and neck, pale gold like the colour of her hair, but thick and disgusting. A Dalek-human hybrid. They'd taken her beautiful body and twisted it into a parody, not quite Dalek, not quite human.

Her eyes glowed, and for a moment he thought she was resisting, that Bad Wolf had emerged to free Rose from the horrors of this existence. But her eyes flashed again, four times, to match the syllables of the word she spoke: "Ex-term-in-ate!"

He woke, screaming.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"What is this?" asked Dr Cole, staring at the nurse whose nose dripped blood.

"This? _This_ is that damned John Smith, the nutter in ward forty-two. He's adapted to his medication, again. Got out of the restraining field and nearly took my head off with some sort of fancy martial arts. Took six orderlies to hold him down long enough to sedate, and with him screaming the entire time. The things he says . . . worlds burning, monsters unleashed on the galaxy. It's enough to make me have nightmares."

"They are nightmares. _His_ nightmares." Dr Cole sighed. "He adapts too quickly. I've seen it happen before, but this—? The treatments simply aren't working. We'll have to change to something different. They've been experimenting with a new class of anti-psychotic drug in the capital. Perhaps we'll get better results with that. We might even need to try combining medications. Meanwhile, I think we ought to schedule him for another round of electro-therapy. I'll make the arrangements."

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"Doctor."

The gentle voice roused him from a drug-induced sleep. He murmured something in reply, not truly aware. At least, not until the speaker repeated his name and he recognized the voice. In that instant, his eyes flew open and he tried to sit upright. The restraints held him back, prevented him from sitting up, but he struggled against them . . . until she touched his shoulder and whispered, "Shhh. Don't hurt yourself, Doctor."

"But . . . Rose." He jerked his arms once more, then fell back with a groan. "What are you doing here? You shouldn't be here."

"It's all right," she said, and her fingers smoothed the wrinkles from his forehead.

"What am I saying? _I_ shouldn't be here, never mind you! Speaking of . . . what _are_ you doing here? How'd you get in? More importantly, why aren't you turning off these restraints? We can get out of here, if we hurry. I know where they're keeping my things. Won't take a jiffy to grab the sonic screwdriver and TARDIS key, and we can be off watching the sunrise on Praxallis VII before they even notice we're gone. Beautiful sunrises on Praxallis. All seven worlds have different coloured atmospheres. Seven's at the end of the spectrum—turns to a lovely shade of vermilion when the sun comes up. Interesting word—vermilion, don't you think? Ver-mill-ion. . . ." He repeated it a couple of times, drawing out the sounds. Finally, he gave up and sighed.

"I'm sorry," she said, still stroking his brow.

"What for? Not your fault, this."

"Oi! Is that it, then? You just giving up? Letting them win?"

He shrugged, feeling the sting of the restraining field against his shoulders.

"Why aren't you trying to get out of here?" she persisted. "Why aren't you trying to find me?"

"Not much point if you're not real, is there?"

"And who says I'm not real? They do. That isn't you. That isn't what you believe. Is it?"

Finally he looked at her. He'd almost forgotten how beautiful she was, his Rose. All pink and yellow, soft curves and intelligent eyes. He loved her. He'd always loved her, his brave, beautiful Rose. But like all dreams, she began to fade with the morning light. As the sun rose, the room slowly lightened, and the grey mists stole Rose away.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The Doctor woke slowly, his mind filled with cotton wool. He had no idea what time it was, and that frightened him. He couldn't tell how long he'd been here, in this hospital, on this planet, whatever it was. They kept injecting him with drugs: sedatives, anti-psychotics, anti-depressants. His body tried to metabolize them, but it couldn't adjust quickly enough, not when they continued to change the medications, and while under their effect, his sense of time all but vanished.

They'd moved him to a different room. The padded cell, again. Vaguely, he supposed it made sense. His wrists carried scars from the restraints, and on at least three occasions he'd ignored the pain long enough to break through the electrical field. Of course they'd move him somewhere more secure.

The straitjacket felt claustrophobic, but he could deal with it. Being alone in the cell, that he approved of. No other patients to stare at him with vacant eyes, to interrupt his musings on escape with their babbling and screeching. On the other hand, he was rather securely bound and it would be much more difficult to get out of here. The room stank, offending his acute senses. And the reason for the nauseating odour offended him even more. The last of the Time Lords, reduced to a dribbling loon, not even allowed toilet privileges.

Oh, yes. He also had an itch, right between his shoulder blades.

How could this have happened? How did he end up here in the first place, and why did they insist on questioning his sanity?

A terrifying image flashed before his eyes, that of a sun collapsing in on itself. Garish colours swirled around, reds and oranges, like blood circling the drain of an obsidian bath. Beside it flared another sun, copper and white, so bright that it hurt his eyes. A binary system in its death throes. But such an event, one sun going nova while the other became a black hole . . . he'd never seen such a thing happen, wasn't even sure it _could_ happen. And supposing, theoretically, that it could actually occur, for anyone to be near enough to witness it would be suicide. Madness, indeed.

He felt himself teetering on the brink between those two stars—one pulling, reaching for him with Death's grasp, while the other pulsed with all the energy and life of the universe.

Just for a moment, he wondered if they were right. If he'd gone insane and invented Rose and all of his other companions as a coping mechanism. It didn't seem so far-fetched. The human mind was capable of taking extreme measures to protect itself, after all.

But he wasn't human. And Rose was real.

She had to be. Or he truly had nothing left.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"And how are you this morning . . . Mr Smith, is it?"

From his place on the floor of the padded room, he groaned in response to the sudden flood of light that heralded the psychiatrist's visit. The straitjacket wouldn't allow him to raise his arms to cover his face, so he had to settle for screwing his eyes shut.

"Sorry for the lights," the man said, and a moment later the room dimmed to a tolerable level. "There, that's better, isn't it? My name is Dr Gray Franklin. I've been assigned to your case, now that Dr Cole has retired. Do you mind if I sit?"

"I'd offer you tea," he said in a voice rough from disuse, "but I haven't been to the market in some time, I'm afraid."

To his surprise, Dr Franklin laughed. That gave him reason enough to try to sit up. The straitjacket made it difficult, but he managed to get upright enough to lean his head against the padded wall.

"I've read your file, Mr Smith—may I call you John?"

He shrugged. "Doesn't seem to matter what anyone calls me, here."

"Yes, I understand that you claimed to be a doctor when you arrived. May I ask what speciality you practised?"

Suspicious, he narrowed his eyes at this new psychiatrist. "A bit of everything, actually. Science, literature, history, philosophy. . . ."

"I see. How interesting. Well then, would you prefer it if I called you Dr Smith?"

He shrugged again, losing interest. What difference did it make what anyone called him? He didn't exist anymore. Not really.

The psychiatrist lowered himself to the padded floor and crossed his legs in front of him. "I understand that you've had some difficulty with the medications Dr Cole tried. Are you still experiencing hallucinations?"

"That depends," he drawled, "are you really here?"

The doctor laughed again, a nice enough sound. Better than the screams he heard at night, the tortured pleas for mercy, the accusations and damnations of all those he'd failed to save. He saw them, every time he opened his eyes. He felt their hands grasping at him, pulling him into a hell that he deserved. And he saw her . . . Rose. Whenever he closed his eyes he saw her standing before him, wearing a black leather jacket that reminded him of the one he'd worn a lifetime ago, and with tears filling her beautiful eyes because he hadn't been able to save her.

". . . Mr Smith?"

"She isn't real, is she?" he finally said, quiet and broken.

"She's real to you," the doctor replied, just as quietly.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"I want to see the stars," he said to Dr Franklin. "You asked if there was anything you could do for me—I want to see the stars. I appreciate all that you've done. Letting me have a bed, instead of a padded cell. Reducing the restraints. Scaling back the medications. All of that. I just . . . I _need_ to see the stars."

"We'll see. Perhaps later this month, if you continue to make improvement."

He turned his head away, the only sort of privacy allowed in this place. At least in the padded cell no one had been watching him . . . no one except for the ghosts of his imagination.

Dr Franklin sat beside the bed. "I've brought you something, John. A bit of research, to help convince you of reality."

"You've already convinced me," he replied without emotion.

"Perhaps. Still, I've found that sometimes concrete evidence can make a difference to the subconscious mind. Here." He took a printout from his coat pocket and handed it to John Smith. "Records from Earth, specifically London of the twentieth century, supporting the fact that a military organization known as UNIT never existed. Likewise for the girl you call Rose Tyler and her friend Mickey Smith. The Time Agency says they've never had an agent by the name of Jack Harkness. My brother is an Agent, and—don't tell anyone, but I asked him to check even the classified records. I also looked for signs of an unusual blue box anywhere in the city, but no one's reported anything like that."

The words "perception filter" ran through his mind, but he shoved them away. Instead, he nodded. "Right. I'm not an alien, I'm just like everyone else here. I haven't got two hearts—only a congenital heart defect. Everything I said about aliens and monsters and other worlds . . . it was all a fabrication. A lie. I believe you," he said, and he meant it.

"What I can't figure out," he continued, "is where did I come from? Where've I spent my life, if what I remember isn't true? Who am I, if not the Doctor?"

Dr Franklin shook his head. "Your identity isn't on file. We've checked your fingerprints and retina scans, even your DNA code, but they match nothing in the database. In all likelihood that means you were born on one of the outer colonies. They don't register their births as often as they should, so it's possible that you slipped through the cracks. We do have a likely candidate, however. The Empire lost communication with the Theta colony about twenty-five years ago. When they finally sent someone to investigate, they discovered nothing but a wasteland. A few of the ship-to-surface shuttles were gone, so they assume at least a handful of survivors, but no one's been able to locate any of them. You would have been a child when it happened, but if you could remember, it would mean a great deal to the families still on Earth."

"But I don't," he answered harshly. "I don't remember anything except for a handful of lies and delusions."

"Well. In any case, I thought you should know—the ship that brought the original colonists to the planet was called _The Blue Rose_."

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"Rose? Where are we?"

She stood in front of him, her arms tucked around herself in defence of the cold breeze. Strands of her hair blew about, obscuring his view of her beautiful face, but she made no move to control them. He did it himself, tucking the dancing bits of hair behind her ears with quick fingers. Her hair was longer than he'd remembered, the colour a shade darker. But still yellow. Yellow and pink, that's his Rose. Or was she blue?

"Where are we?" he repeated, though he knew the answer. This place haunted his nightmares more often than Arcadia. Dårlig Ulv Stranden . . . the place he'd last seen Rose.

She unfolded her arms and reached one hand out to him. He stared at her fingertips as they neared his face, until he jerked away. "No. No touch. Only . . . only a hologram. Remember? This . . . all of this is a projection, through the last crack in the barrier between worlds."

He could only see her—he couldn't touch her. Couldn't hold her as she wept. Couldn't cling to her as they both so desperately needed. It was only a projection, a hologram, an illusion.

Could it really be so simple? An illusion. Nothing more? After the Time War—no, after the colonial disaster—he'd needed someone; at the height of his reckless despair, he'd found her: someone to give him strength, someone to hold his hand, someone to save him. How many times Rose had saved him!

Now . . . now he had to save himself, by letting go.

"Am I ever gonna see you again?" Rose asked, her voice cracking with sorrow.

He hesitated, so very afraid. The grief in her eyes nearly broke him. Still, he shook his head minutely. "You can't."

He stood there and watched her heart break, to save his sanity. And then he left her crying on a deserted beach that existed only in his mind.

_To Be Concluded. . . ._


	3. Chapter 3

**Part Three**

Finally—finally, one of the nurses escorted him onto a narrow balcony for some fresh air. He'd earned the privilege, Dr Franklin had decreed. Away from of the confines of the hospital corridors, he breathed deeply, anxious to get the sterile atmosphere out of his lungs. A friendly breeze blew, stronger up here than it would be down on the surface. It ruffled his hair, and for a few moments, he felt almost alive and free again. Almost.

Once he'd gotten rid of the hospital stench, John Smith tightened the belt of his thin robe and stepped further out onto the patio. The metropolitan lights sparkled all the way to the horizon, but he had no interest in this alien city. His heart would always belong to the stars, and that's where he directed his gaze now, in hopes of seeing past the city's glow. He wasn't disappointed. A vast expanse of glittering diamond dust stretched above, with the blue-black of space behind it. Off to the north, a nebula glowed with swirls of gold and green. The colours reminded him of the inside of the TARDIS . . . and he felt a pang in his chest. His subconscious must've drawn the colours from the nebula. The TARDIS didn't exist—had never existed.

Back to the stars, then. Once upon a time, he could calculate his position anywhere in the universe, in any time period—or so he'd believed—just by examining the stars. Of course, he might be off by a decade or two, depending on how well he remembered his stellar cartography . . . not that it mattered. John Smith didn't have those kinds of abilities, only the Doctor did. Still, his eyes sought out familiar patterns in the stars. Sought and found. Yet what he found didn't make sense.

Minutes passed by while he stared without comprehension at the stars. How could the stars be wrong? How could they possibly. . . ?

"No," he finally whispered, breathing the word out. He glanced at the nurse wildly, then moved up against the railing. Against her panicked cautions, he leaned out and stared upward. His gaze swept from the nebula to the cluster of stars in the eastern sky, over to the crystallised band of debris that encircled this world, and down to the broken constellations that curved across the horizon. "No! No, no, no! Impossible!"

His fragile reality threatened to turn upside down.

The nurse's insistent hand on his arm brought him back to his senses. Obediently John walked back inside, his heart pounding a rapid double tempo. He pressed a hand to his chest, wondering. Once in the hallway, he stopped in a daze. "Impossible," he muttered, and began counting on his fingers. He glanced up only when someone walked by, and then he stopped and ran after the passing doctor.

"Doctor Franklin! Where did you say we are again? No, not the facility—the planet! Which _planet_ are we on?"

"Tilumnia. Oh, d'you mean the designation? Beta Orion IV. Why?" He gave the nurse a significant look, and she nodded in return. One hand slipped into the pocket of her apron where a tranquilliser waited.

"Why?" He laughed and ran a hand through his frenzied hair. "Because we're _not_ on Beta Orion IV! Not according to those stars out there." He jabbed a finger toward the doors leading outside. "We're nowhere near where Beta Orion IV should be! Though, in all fairness, I suppose you could say that we're somewhere in the same neighbourhood—just not at the right address. I don't know what it means yet—give me time and I'll figure it out."

Dr Franklin looked thoughtful as he folded his arms. "Perhaps your calculations are thrown off by the Cataclysm?"

"The _what_?" If possible, his eyes grew even wider. A celestial phenomenon that he'd never heard of? For a moment he even forgot that he _wasn't_ an all-knowing Time Lord. "Oh, but this is brilliant! What was this Cataclysm? Go on, tell me!"

Franklin frowned but complied. "More than a thousand years ago, not long after humans colonized this planet, something caused the nearest world in our system to explode. Theories run the gamut from the commonly-accepted asteroid impact, to a deliberate attempt at sabotage by some unknown enemy, to the more fantastic idea of a sentient population causing the disaster themselves, either through a self-destructive war, or by experimenting with technology they didn't understand. Whatever the true cause, the force of the destruction shifted our planet into a different orbit, closer to the sun. For a century or more, the colonists had to live in underground shelters to escape the dust in the atmosphere and the constant tremors. Eventually, things calmed down enough for civilisation to resume itself and that's when we took our place within the Empire."

John shook his head and then threw his arms up in the air and whooped with laughter. When the expressions of the doctor and nurse grew too consternated, he attempted to regain control. His mind spun, but he forced himself to focus. Still wheezing, he clapped Dr Franklin on the shoulder. "You, sir, deserve a medal."

The doctor exchanged a glance with the nurse. "Of course I do. Now, why don't you come along to your room? We'll get you something to eat, maybe something to read. I have one of the latest science journals—just arrived in the post this morning. Would you like that, John?"

"I might, if I really was John Smith," he answered, grinning insanely. "But I'm not."

"No? And who might you be, then?" Franklin asked, frowning a bit more as he began to steer his patient back toward his room.

"Me? Oh, I'm the Doctor!"

"I see. And what's made you change your mind about this? I thought you'd agreed that your experiences at a 'Time Lord' were fantasy—a delusion created by your mind to protect you from a reality you couldn't accept."

"Oh, there's nothing wrong with that theory! It's rather brilliant, in fact. Just not as brilliant as the truth," the Doctor said, with a wink at the nurse. "You see, sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction. I woke up here, and everything you showed me seemed to support your statement about John Smith experiencing a severe enough trauma to create a break from reality: no one had ever heard of the Doctor, UNIT never existed, London never had a Prime Minister Harriet Jones, and Rose Tyler was never born. So, logically, those things must be the fantasy. Occam's Razor—the simplest explanation is usually the correct one."

Franklin lifted a finger to interrupt. "You mean Schrödinger's Razor, I believe."

"And I suppose it's Occam's cat? Never mind. You've proved my point," the Doctor said, his grin widening. "For awhile you had me convinced. I couldn't prove anything—not until now, that is."

Franklin raised an eyebrow and paused in the doorway to John Smith's room. "And the Cataclysm supports all of this, somehow?"

The Doctor cheerfully thumped Franklin on the shoulder. "Smart man! The Cataclysm does exactly that. You see—" He leaned closer, lowering his voice. "—I've never heard of it."

"No? Well, I shouldn't be surprised at that. We did speculate that you're from one of the outer colonies. Their schools aren't exactly known for their well-rounded curriculum. Perhaps they didn't view it as necessary to their history or astronomy classes."

"Oh, I'm sure. But that isn't why I hadn't heard of it. You see, where I come from, that event never happened. That's why the stars looked wrong—this planet's in a completely different location than it should be! Shifted orbits and all that."

"I see." Franklin nodded as though he understood. "And UNIT? Captain Harkness? Miss Tyler? How does the Cataclysm explain their absence from the history records?"

"Oh, it doesn't," the Doctor said, rising up onto his toes with barely-repressed excitement. He grinned. "But the fact that we're in a parallel universe does."

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The Doctor hesitated just before the hospital's double glass doors. It had been years since he'd been free and among the sane. The sight of so many people moving along the pavement nearly sent him running. But he had one chance to convince Dr Franklin of the truth of his existence. One chance to find the TARDIS and prove that he didn't belong in this universe. If he failed . . . well, it didn't bear thinking about.

He tugged at his jacket, the brown pinstriped suit lending him a bit of the Doctor's strength. But no—he couldn't think that way. He _was_ the Doctor. Thus, the suit merely reminded him of his own self: a man who'd given Daleks and Cybermen nightmares, a man who'd witnessed the birth and death of entire galaxies. The last of the Time Lords. With that thought, he straightened his posture and stepped out into the flowing mass of pedestrians.

Unfortunately, after five and a half years of enduring a constant stream of psychoactive drugs and periodic jolts to his brain, the Doctor couldn't remember quite where he'd parked the TARDIS. He could sense Dr Franklin's growing impatience, and so he finally stopped on a street corner.

"Is this it?"

"No, no. I just need to get my bearings. Quiet for a minute, would you?" And with that the Doctor closed his eyes. A few deep breaths calmed him, and ever so gently he stretched out his weakened senses. It took him a minute to build a psychic wall strong enough to tune out the personal timelines of all the people surging around him, but once he did so, he could concentrate all his focus on his link with the TARDIS. She had to be close by.

And there she was: faint but glowing with the golden energy of Time itself.

"Ah." He let out a rush of air, dizzy and euphoric with relief. "We're close. Just another two streets north of here. Come on!"

He ran. He ran all the way, until he rounded a corner and came to a skidding halt in front of one of the most beautiful sights he'd ever seen: an ordinary blue police box from mid-twentieth century Earth.

"Oh, but look at you. You poor thing. You poor, magnificent thing." The Doctor ran his hands across the faded, peeling paint of the wood, then stood on his toes in order to reach up and finger the missing letters in the sign. One of the windows had cracked glass, and the door itself had warped, the wood buckled from neglect. "I'm sorry," he murmured, caressing the door handle, which had come loose. "I'm so sorry."

"Police Public Call Box?"

The Doctor turned, startled. Of course: Dr Franklin. He could see scepticism in the man's eyes, so he fumbled in his pocket for his key. "Care to see inside?"

He unlocked it easily enough, but had some trouble getting the door to open. A firm shove with his shoulder finally did the trick, and he nearly stumbled with the psychic equivalent of a slap and the agitated query, "_Where've you been, you filthy tosser?_"

"Oh, I know. I know," he soothed, jogging up the ramp directly to the console. The lights flickered on when he skimmed his fingers across the dark time rotor. "We'll get you fixed up in no time, I promise."

"Your ship—she's damaged?"

The Doctor placed his overcoat gently across the nearest support strut, his hand lingering against the rough coral surface. Without breaking contact, he glanced at Dr Franklin. He had to give the man points for not stating the obvious—if he'd heard, "bigger on the inside" once, he'd heard it a thousand times. Turning to continue his inspection, he shrugged. "Damaged, yes. But repairable."

"Was it because you were gone?"

"Gone. Drugged out of my mind. Shocked repeatedly. All of that disrupted my brainwave pattern, made it difficult to maintain my connection with the TARDIS. Poor thing must've thought I'd died. Of course, it didn't help that we're in the entirely wrong universe. She's been running on batteries the entire time, without the benefit of my psychic reserves to boost her strength."

"But she'll be all right? Your ship, I mean. She'll recover?"

The Doctor waved negligently. "Been through worse, she and I. Of course, I'll have to give her an infusion of my own life energy—no more than five or six years, I'd imagine. Give her a few hours to recover and she'll be right as rain."

"I see."

"Do you? You believed in me, Dr Franklin—"

"But I didn't! I kept you on those medications. I authorized those treatments. . . ."

"So you did. But only because you didn't know better. When it mattered—really mattered—you listened, and you gave me a chance. Now I'd like to give you one." He waited until Franklin tilted his head with curiosity, then delivered his offer. "Ever want to travel in time? Your brother's a Time Agent. Bet you got jealous a time or two, yeah? Well, here's your chance! One place, one time: your choice. Anywhere you want."

Franklin stared at him, astonished.

"Come on," the Doctor cajoled. "The sky's the limit! Isn't there some historic event you've always wanted to see first-hand? Or some alien world that you've always dreamed about?"

"I think. . . ."

"Yes? Go on! No, don't tell me. I know—the Cataclysm, yeah? You want to go and find out what caused it?"

"As amazing as that would be, I think I've kept you from your mission long enough," Franklin said, with only a hint of visible regret.

The Doctor frowned at him for a moment, then turned to the console. He pulled out one of the depleted power cells and nonchalantly sacrificed five years of his life to recharge it. Once it began glowing, he gently set it back into its slot. "Mission? What mission?"

Instead of answering, Franklin walked to where the Doctor's coat hung from the support strut. He bent and picked something up from the grating below it. A photograph. He held out the photo with an apologetic smile. "Rose. You had her image with your things the entire time. Why did you never say anything?"

The Doctor looked away without taking the photo. "You wouldn't have listened. She wasn't born in this universe."

"But she _did_ exist."

The emergency brake had rusted. He'd have to fix that before he went anywhere. A bit of industrial lubricant should do the trick. He had some around here somewhere, didn't he?

"John," Franklin began, then stopped. "Doctor, I was wrong. Rose Tyler _did_ exist in this universe. I didn't lie to you—no one by that name was ever born in twentieth-century London. But after you told me about the Cataclysm, I did some checking. Pete and Jackie Tyler lived in London of that era. He was some kind of entrepreneurial genius. Made a fortune by the time he was thirty-five, then took over as head of Torchwood. He and his wife didn't have children—not at first. But after the Cyber-invasion of 2006, Jackie Tyler vanished, presumed dead. Three years later she reappeared, not a scratch on her . . . and with a twenty-year-old daughter that no one had ever seen before. They went on to have half a dozen more kids, but the daughter, the eldest—her name was Rose."

The handbrake broke off in the Doctor's hand.

"She never had any sort of official identity. A bit of a ghost, it seemed. Worked for Torchwood with Pete, and that other bloke you mentioned: Mickey Smith. Except his name is given as Ricky Smith, in the archives. That's why I never found mention of him."

"Ricky?" The Doctor turned a hard stare upon Franklin. "_Ricky_ Smith? Are you certain? Absolutely one-hundred-percent positive? It was Ricky Smith? Not Mickey?"

"Richard Michael Smith, yes: otherwise known as Ricky. Raised by his grandmother; part of an underground organization known as 'The Preachers'; played a crucial role in defeating the Cybermen."

"Oh, bless you, Mickey the Idiot!" With a grin, the Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and gave it a quick recharge from the port on the console.

Franklin looked on with confusion. "Is it the right man, then? This Mickey, or Ricky, or whoever he is?"

"Oh, yes!"

"But, what about the name, then? Why did you call him Mickey, when the records state. . . ."

"Long story," the Doctor replied. He stuck the sonic screwdriver between his teeth and used both hands to pull open the grating beneath the console. Once he'd yanked a handful of wires out, he aimed the screwdriver at them and resumed talking. "Mickey _is_ Ricky—only from a parallel universe. We accidentally landed here in this universe during the Cyber invasion, Ricky got himself killed, Mickey stayed behind and took his place. And that, my dear Dr Franklin, is how I know I'm in the right one."

"But—parallel universes! You keep saying that, but it's impossible."

"You believed me back at the hospital. What's so different now?"

Franklin shook his head. "But I didn't, not really. I thought if I let you look for your ship, you'd realize that you were mistaken and finally accept the truth. But now? Now I'm standing in a time ship that's bigger on the inside, watching a madman effect repairs on organic circuits."

"I'm not mad," the Doctor said, pausing his work. Even in the dim light, his eyes gleamed fiercely. "You know that. Or we'd never have left that hospital."

"Perhaps." Franklin shrugged. "Maybe I'm the one who's crazy. Parallel universes?"

The Doctor pulled out a fresh batch of corroded wiring and began stripping them. "It's a well-known concept, even in your era: every time a major decision is made, a parallel universe is created where events follow a different path."

Franklin looked thoughtful. "I wonder what sort of decision led to your birth, Doctor. And why didn't it happen here, as well? Pity, that. I have a feeling that our universe is a lot worse off without you."

"A lot of people would disagree with you," the Doctor said, while soldering fresh connections between two vital circuits. "I save lives, yes. But I always show up when there's trouble, and sooner or later people begin to associate my arrival with death and destruction. You wouldn't believe the nicknames I've earned over the centuries."

"Those creatures, then, the ones you spoke of in your delirium?"

His jaw tightened imperceptibly. "All real. More dreadful villains than you can imagine, all of them deadly."

"And Rose, she helps you fight these Daleks and all the rest?"

The Doctor glanced over at Franklin. "Hand me that stabiliser, would you? That bit of metal, just there, on the floor. Yes, that's the one."

He handed the requested item to the Doctor, then folded his arms and leaned against the console. "You loved her—Rose. I'd be a very poor psychiatrist indeed if I couldn't see that."

The Doctor concentrated on screwing the stabiliser in place. Once he'd done that, and connected it to the new wires, he said, "Here's a thought: put that in a memo and entitle it 'Things I Already Know'."

Franklin half smiled. "I think you mean '_things_ I already know'."

"That's what I said." He knelt in front of the console and reached inside the open panel. His face contorted as he felt around for the proper junction. His fingers found the right spot, he twisted, and the Time Rotor slowly began to glow. "Ah-ha! There we go."

"It's beautiful," Franklin said. "But you didn't say '_things_'—I very clearly heard you say 'things'."

"But that doesn't make sense. Why would I say 'things', when the phrase is '_things_ I already know'?"

"Right. Of course. Why would you?" Franklin began to look more than a little concerned.

"Things," the Doctor repeated, puzzled. He tapped the sonic screwdriver against the palm of his hand. Then his face cleared in understanding. "Right, sorry! It's the TARDIS. She gets into your head, automatically translates. Sort of a telepathic language field. But she dislikes vulgarity—has a funny habit of changing words around when she translates them. So when I said, 'things', you heard 'things'. And you still only hear 'things', not 'things', don't you?"

Franklin blinked as he tried to make sense of this. "An automatic censor, you mean? So, I assume that when you say 'things', you're actually saying '_things_'?"

"That's right." The Doctor grinned. "Actually, I'm saying—" and he glanced up at the ceiling while he spoke a series of fluid syllables and dancing vowels. "But that won't translate at all into your language, so she substitutes the closest thing. Which in this case, is 'things' and so she again substitutes, and we end up with a conversation that makes little sense."

"Not a problem." Franklin looked a bit dazed, not that the Doctor blamed him. It was a lot for a man to take in, even one who dealt with the insane on a daily basis.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The Doctor jiggled his hands in his pockets, glancing around the dim TARDIS with a sense of being within a dream. Any minute now, he'd wake inside that padded room again. Or tied to a bed in a ward full of manic-depressives and paranoid schizophrenics. To distract himself from the dismal feeling, he bounced on the tips of his toes. Dr Franklin had left some time ago, with a final admonition to go and find Rose. But it wasn't that easy. He'd spent more than five years being told that she didn't exist, and had even begun to believe it himself over the last year. His Rose was nothing but a blue rose—a symbol among humans for an impossible dream, a quest for something that didn't exist.

And yet . . . hadn't humans genetically engineered a rose with blue petals, sometime in the twenty-first century?

If they could do the impossible, why couldn't he?

After all, he'd already done the hard part—crossing universes. Doing so had almost killed him—and who was insane enough to try and travel through a black hole and a supernova at the same time? Served him right that they'd found him semi-conscious and delivered him to the nut house. But now he knew that he wasn't crazy, that he really _was_ the Doctor, that Rose did, in fact, exist, and in this very universe. It should only be a matter of setting coordinates for Earth and hoping he arrived before Rose gave up on him.

He let the torment of indecision wash through him for a moment. For a half a moment he allowed himself to admit that the past few years had been terrible. Beyond terrible—excruciating, humiliating, and . . . well, terrible. But he'd been through worse, hadn't he? Many times, and he was always all right.

Yet, how much easier his life would be if he _wasn't_ the Doctor.

The thought escaped from the darkest corners of his mind before he could prevent it. Once there, he tried to banish it, but it was true. John Smith didn't have to face Daleks and all of the worst nightmares the universe could create. John Smith didn't have to save the world, again and again, losing everything in the process, and without a word of thanks for his trouble. John Smith didn't have to be responsible for the well-being of every life in the universe.

John Smith . . . didn't have Rose.

And with that, the Doctor began powering up the minor systems, slowly bringing the TARDIS back to life.


End file.
